FAP Council, October 12, 2026
For this meditation, I’d like to explore the concept of hope through three figures: the character of Gatsby in Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, the Apostle Paul, and the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. I’ll begin with an excerpt from the novel *The Great Gatsby*:
“And as I sat there, thinking of the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s astonishment when he first recognized the green light at the end of Daisy’s pier. He had come a long way to that blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He didn’t know that it was already behind him, somewhere back there in the vast darkness beyond the city, in the dark fields of the republic stretching out beneath the night.
“Gatsby had faith in that green light, in that ecstatic future that recedes from us year after year. For now, it eludes us. But that doesn’t matter. Tomorrow, we’ll run faster, we’ll reach out further... And, one fine morning... And so we struggle on, like boats against the current, endlessly pushed back toward our past.”
Here, I choose to see Gatsby as a symbol of hope. In the novel, he spent his entire life pursuing a dream, living in the hope of reuniting with the woman with whom he shared an intense passion for one summer. When he finally finds her again—when his hope is finally realized—reality can only disappoint him. Fitzgerald makes it clear that the disappointment does not stem from the woman herself, but from “the colossal vitality of Gatsby’s illusion.” Gatsby had sketched out the contours of his hope so completely that, when it came true, he could not help but be disappointed. As Fitzgerald writes: “His dream seemed so close that he could not fail to grasp it.” In reality, that dream had already passed him by. Gatsby’s downfall may stem from the fact that his hope was a hope that “sees” what it hopes for. At the end of his dock, Gatsby had formed a hope so defined and concrete that, once realized, it could only lead to his downfall.
In contrast to Gatsby as a symbol of deadly hope, I would like to propose the figure of Abraham from the Epistle to the Romans. We can read verses 18–21 of chapter 4 of the Epistle to the Romans:
“Abraham, who against all hope, relying on hope, had faith to become the father of many nations, as it is said: ‘So shall your descendants be, and, not wavering in his faith, he considered his own body—already as good as dead, for he was nearly a hundred years old—and Sarah’s barren womb; yet, in view of God’s promise, he did not waver in unbelief but was strengthened by faith, giving glory to God, fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to fulfill.”
Abraham’s situation seems to offer little cause for hope. Faced with God’s promise that he would become the father of a great nation, he considers his own age and Sarah’s advanced age—described in no uncertain terms by Paul (his own body already ravaged by death, and Sarah’s physical decline)—and knows that God’s promise defies all reality. Yet Paul specifically emphasizes that Abraham did not doubt, but received the divine promise with confidence, knowing that what God had promised, He could also bring to pass. It is this attitude of Abraham that Paul is referring to when he uses the phrase “against all hope, yet relying on hope.”
To hope against all hope means trusting in a reality that is lived and understood from God’s perspective. For Abraham, the reality of his situation offered little cause for hope.
Hope is possible only because God is the guarantor of another reality. To Paul, the hope that sustained Abraham has nothing to do with human plans; it is not a dream that human imagination or will can shape and then set out to achieve. It is a hope that transcends the realm of human life—and, in fact, even calls it into question.
For Paul, God’s sovereignty is such that human beings can rest in it and wait with confidence—without impatience—for this improbable hope to become a reality. But human beings must also be aware of their smallness in the face of this hope. They are humbled—or, if you prefer, brought low—by the realization of what they can do to bring their hope to fruition. If we cannot even conceive of the reality of what we hope for, there is little credit to be given to human beings when what we hope for finally comes to pass. Abraham’s merit lies in his trust and obedience to the divine will, but he is not the source of the fulfilment of the promise.
I will now turn to Søren Kierkegaard. In his Christian discourse, “The Care of the Pagans,” Kierkegaard reflects on the concept of tomorrow, initially in a negative sense: he defines tomorrow as the “care of tomorrow.” He writes:
“The next day: it is the grappling hook that allows the vast horde of worries to cling to the frail skiff of the ‘Individual’; if the operation succeeds, he is then at the mercy of that power. The next day: it is the first link in the chain that binds a man, along with thousands of others, to this fatal abundance of worries.”[i]
Isn’t worry about the future precisely the opposite of hope? In contrast to the persevering and confident waiting exemplified by Abraham and called for among the believers in Rome, worry about the future is the attitude of someone who, constantly focused on the future, does not hold onto hope as Paul would have us do. Doesn’t the worry about tomorrow characterize that other figure of dashed hope, Jay Gatsby, who pursues his dream with an intensity that ultimately leads to his downfall? If hope is not the worry about tomorrow, the preoccupation with the future, or the frantic pursuit of a dream, we must nevertheless consider how to give it a positive meaning.
Kierkegaard uses the image of the rower as a “correct and true attitude”[ii] toward the problem of the future. He describes the situation as follows:
“In the boat, the rower has his back turned to the goal toward which he is nevertheless striving. The same is true of tomorrow. When, through the help of the Eternal One, a person lives fully immersed in the present moment, he turns his back on tomorrow. And the more eternity immerses him in the present, the more he deliberately turns his back on tomorrow—which he therefore cannot see. If he turns away, eternity becomes blurred in his eyes and turns into tomorrow. But when, in order to steer himself properly toward the goal (eternity), he turns his back on it, he cannot see the next day at all, whereas, thanks to the eternal, he sees the present day and his tasks with perfect clarity. And this is how a man must orient himself in order to work well today. Any moment of impatience when we want to look toward the goal to see if we’re getting any closer is always a cause of delay and distraction. No; be resolute once and for all and get to work—with your back turned to the goal. This is what the rower does in the boat, and so does the believer.”[iii]
The one who hopes in the Christian way is the one who, so to speak, firmly turns his back on his hope and anchors his life in the present. Kierkegaard’s concern is that the Christian should not lose himself in contemplation of the eternal (for example, concern for the afterlife or paradise) by thinking that he is thereby closer to the divine. . Christian hope is rooted in the confidence that God can fulfill what God has promised, and therefore, Christians no longer need to worry about the future. They are invited to immerse themselves in the present.
This brief reflection on hope seems useful to me for our work at the FAP. Hope is an integral part of our mission, and we must trust those who bring projects to us. The future does not belong to us, and it is our decisions in the present that should concern us. So we turn our backs on our goal, without looking to tomorrow, and we get to work.
Valérie NICOLET - vicepresient
[i] Søren Kierkegaard, Discours Chrétiens vol. 1, Neuchâtel, Delachaux et Niestlé, 1967, p. 99.
[ii] Søren Kierkegaard, Discours Chrétiens dans Œuvres completes vol. 15, Paris, L’Orante, p. 68.
[iii] Ibid.